Symbian Head Quits Citing ‘Personal Reasons’

The bad news continues for the Symbian platform, after it emerged that the executive director Lee Williams has stepped down after two years in charge, for personal reasons.

“The Symbian Foundation is today announcing that Lee M. Williams has stepped down from his position as Executive Director for personal reasons,” read an official statement from the Symbian Foundation. “We thank Lee for his work over the past two years and wish him all the best in his future ventures.”

Tim Holbrow has been promoted from chief financial officer to the position of executive director with immediate effect. “We congratulate Tim and welcome him to his new role,” said the organisation.

The news comes amid a seemingly endless barrage of bad news for Symbian.

Symbian Faces Android, iPhone, RIM… and Windows Phone

Last month both Samsung and Sony Ericsson announced that they were dropping the operating system from their handsets. This follows the announcement from Nokia earlier this year that it was going to drop Symbian^3 OS from its flagship N range handsets.

In July Gartner analyst Nick Jones publicly waded in, saying that the Symbian Foundation was just re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic and was ignoring the Android iceberg ahead. He later on launched a fresh attack on Symbian, saying that the “Symbian open source experiment has failed.”

“The only two top-tier device manufacturers on the Symbian board other than Nokia have deserted it,” he wrote in a September blog posting. Since that posting, Windows Phone 7 has arrived, adding to the competition and winning plaudits from Stephen Fry.

Symbian 3 was revealed ealier this year at the Mobile World Congress after the operating system went fully open source. Nokia’s latest flagship smartphone, the N8, will be the last flagship handset to run the operating system amid ongoing concerns over its user interface.

Nokia meanwhile is pinning its hopes on the open-source MeeGo operating system it is developing in conjunction with chip giant Intel. Nokia and Intel are expected to demo the MeeGo 1.1 mobile OS, running on the Nokia N900, at the Meego Conference in November.

However Ovum analyst Tony Cripps has previously expressed his doubts about MeeGo’s ability to get in the way of Apple, Google Android or Microsoft. “From the perspective of most third-party developers,” Cripps wrote in a June report, “MeeGo remains an unknown and unproven quantity that is entering an already highly competitive and crowded landscape.”

Symbian Woes Mirroring Nokia?

And it seems that Symbian’s troubles are mirroring that of parent organisation Nokia. In early October Ari Jaaksi, head of Nokia’s MeeGo Linux mobile operating system unit, announced his resignation.

Nokia has undergone a turbulent time as it seeks to reinvigorate itself and take the fight to Apple, Google and others.

To this end it has a new man in charge, namely the former Microsoft manager Stephen Elop, who was appointed in September after former chief Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo was ousted. Other notable departures include Nokia’s chairman, Jorma Ollila, who in September announced his decision to step down. It is also understood that UK boss Mark Loughran has left.

And of course Anssi Vanjoki, Nokia’s executive vice president responsible for smartphones, announced in mid September that he would leave the company in six months time.